


Protection

by cocoacremeandgays



Series: Dirk's Not-So-Alphabetical Alphabet [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: And punched in the crotch, Autistic! Dirk, Brotherly Protection, Dave gets pissed, Dirk gets pissed too, Gen, Humor, Minor Injuries, Other Restaurants, People get kicked in the crotch, Sensory Processing Disorder/Sensory Processing Issues, Stimming, Subway, bullying/teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:23:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8052685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoacremeandgays/pseuds/cocoacremeandgays
Summary: "Poor guy," David stated, ushering the two of you out of the Subway with sandwiches in hand, "I wonder what happened to him."
There was not a single moment's hesitation as Dave proudly proclaimed, "I punched that man in the penis!"





	Protection

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I've posted one of these, but I'm back with more ideas for chapters than I had before. There will probably be more coming out in the relatively near future. :)  
> Hope you enjoy!

Going out to eat with anyone has always been your version of Hell on Earth; especially when you have to actually go in to order, and sit down to eat. That's your absolute least favorite thing that you have to go through (aside from theatre class), and you still find yourself in this predicament even after you've voiced your obvious distaste incredibly clearly. To this day, you're really not all that sure why people find it satisfactory to treat you the way they do whenever you're ordering food; they ask you what you want, and you tell them what you want, but some of the people who work the registers look at you with an expression that reminds you of a hair-tie, because of how scrunched up it is when you give them your first precursory glance. You've since stopped looking at their face, because, as you've deemed over the years, faces are what lead you down the "road" of mental distress. 

There's way too much going on in one area, and you're never quite sure how to process the way things are going and twitching and moving, not to mention the slightest change can mean that you've gone from a happy expression, to a confused expression, to a sad expression, and even a stern expression; you're still not quite sure what the major differences to look for in any of them are, not that you ever look at faces anyway. 

You remember one time, when you and Dave were about seven, that the two of you went to Subway with David. Bro was off doing a gig at some place or another, you're still not quite sure where he went specifically, but what sticks out in your mind is the fact that it was just you and Dave and David, and the cashier woman, and the three other people who put together the sandwiches and "either look way too happy, or like they have the worst lives in the universe," as Dave puts it. You envy his people-reading skills sometimes, but not too much. You probably wouldn't be able to deal with all of that sudden information if you knew it.

It was your turn to virtually put together whatever sandwich you wanted, and you hadn't been paying attention too well, so it was kind of a serious shock when you were suddenly put on the spot like that. The lady looked at you with this face that made you kind of unhappy, and you stared at your shoes as she, perceptibly, waited. It was hardly a minute that passed before David knelt down next to you and asked you what you wanted on your sandwich. Not one to try anything new out, you simply said, "Salmon and pretzels."

David gave you a bit of a strange look (Dave later told you it was a "What the fuck does Bro feed this kid?" type of look), before explaining to you that Subway doesn't have salmon or pretzels, but that you could get a tuna sandwich and chips instead. You immediately declined, because tuna was never something that you enjoyed. "Then what do you want on your sandwich?"

You didn't know what the options were, so you were at a bit of a loss at this point. You didn't know what to say, and gave a pleading look up to the big, bright, shining board that had a bunch of shapes on it, most of which seemed to be sandwiches that looked absolutely disgusting, and half of the majority seemed to be sandwiches that would make you want to "rip your tongue off and feed it to sharks". Thankfully, Dave noticed your total confusion, and stepped in.

"There's turkey, and there's tuna, and there's chicken, and there's meatballs." Now that you're older and have been to Subway a countless number of times, you know that Subway has more than four different meat choices, depending on what you get, but this was a good decade ago, and you didn't know that back then. You made an elongated "Uhhh," noise under your breath as you processed the options.

"Turkey?" You didn't really understand, at the time, that they weren't gonna put a whole turkey on a piece of bread, and pulled a strange face yourself. You then proceeded to say something that will probably never be forgotten in Strider history, "I want to have turkey on my sandwich, but I only want the not-leg parts."

David smiled wide, eyes shutting visibly, because this was before he actually actively wore the shades he does now. "Okay, Dirk. I promise you that you will not get any of the leg parts."

"No feet."

"No feet, either." 

David stood back up and told the lady who had been watching the two of you closely, that you wanted a six-inch turkey on white bread. She nodded in agreement, and turned around to get the proper bread from the strange storage units behind her that you never cared to learn the name of. When she turned back around, she cut the long piece of bread in half, and then put weird, circular slices of meat onto the bread. Once they were folded, neatly overlapping each other, she looked back up and gave a fleeting glance back over to you. "What type of cheese?"

You made the prolonged "Uhhh," noise under your breath again, and didn't really know what to say. You tuned out David's answer, so you still aren't sure what type of cheese you ended up getting, or if you even got cheese in the first place. The next thing you knew, you were further down the line with David and Dave, and David was asking you what else you wanted on your sandwich, like vegetables and condiments. You made another prolonged "Uhhh," noise, but this one was because there was a lot going on at once, and you thought you heard someone stifling a laugh behind you. Dave butted in again.

"There's olives, and pickles, and banana peppers, and halla penis-"

"Jalapenos-" David butted in quickly to correct Dave, but Dave just kept listing.

"-and lettuce, and onions, and tomatoes, and cue-... cumin-... cuebers-"

"-cucumbers-"

"-and spinach, too." 

Needless to say, all of those options were immensely overwhelming as well, and you weren't quite sure if there was one thing that you were supposed to pick, over all of the other things that you were able to pick. With your mild insecurity, came the belief that you should just go with the few toppings that you remembered Dave saying. "Olives, pickles, and tomatoes. But not too many. I don't want too many."

That was when you definitely heard someone start to laugh uncontrollably behind you, and it was deafening to your ears because of the way their voice seemed to scratch and draw in at the end, like some sort of dying animal. Whoever it was, didn't know how to laugh right, because they were really going to break their voice if they kept that strange noise up. You groaned in response, and David nodded towards you for a split second, before standing up and talking to the woman again. Dave then stepped forward and wrapped his arms tightly around you. You will be forever grateful for Dave's seemingly-miraculous people-reading skills, because you really needed that at that moment. The people who were laughing behind you eventually died off, and you overheard some of their conversation.

"-n't laugh at him, he's just a kid," a girl's voice spoke up, and there was the distinct rustle of some sort of clothing that you really didn't like the sound of. There was some scraping noises, too, and it made you incredibly upset to hear that. Like she was scraping money with really long fingernails.

"We were all kids at one point, but I mean, he's like ten, and he's talking like a first grader. It's fuckin' pitiful," a boy states, and you can only assume he's the one who's been laughing so strangely for the past few minutes. He then proceeded to mimic you, though he was very far off in his vocal imitation skills, because he didn't sound like you at all; not to mention you weren't ten, you were seven, and you're in second grade. Why did he think you were older? "'Olives, and pickles, and tomatoes. But not too many. I don't want too many,' what type of picky ass says that shit? You get what you get."

"He's a kid." The girl repeated this and she made a noise that either portrayed stress, or was what you like to call a, "happy smiley noise". You couldn't figure out which one she had ended up making, and that was kind of socially disorienting. You wondered why this was happening at all. "Besides, he's adorable. Don't bully the kid."

"The way that other kid's hugging him is so fucking dumb."

"Ca-"

"I mean, just look at them, they're like- ooh, _Jesus Christ on a biscuit_."

You don't remember specifically what had happened that lead up to what Dave did, but you do remember the fact that you felt a distinct lack of arms around you, and that seriously ended up screwing you up. Minimally discombobulated, you spun around to figure out where Dave had gone, because he wasn't in your line of sight, and the next thing you know, you're watching your twin brother punch a seventeen year old guy right in the crotch. This teenager tumbles to the ground, holding himself and damn close to tears, while the girl, who looks to be about sixteen, crouches and high-fives Dave. 

Dave proceeded to turn right back around and grin "proudly", walking right back over to proceed in reclaiming his place next to where you were still standing.

Both you and Dave kept that a bit of a secret until David turned around, and saw the shenanigans that was needlessly going on behind him. With a furrowed brow and "pursed lips", David stopped and watched as the girl tried to help the guy into a position that wasn't fetal. "Poor guy," David stated, ushering the two of you out of the Subway with sandwiches in hand, "I wonder what happened to him."

Dave beamed up at David, and then gave you a knowing look. You had no idea what was coming, until he said it, loud and clear enough for anyone within a block-radius of this particular Subway's entrance to hear it as if it was being said in their ear (that's an extreme exaggeration, he just said it loudly).

There was not a single moment's hesitation as Dave proudly proclaimed, "I punched that man in the penis!" 

**~*~*~**

Skip forward almost ten years to an unseasonably warm day in September, even for the extremities of the area you and your family lives in. You and Dave are edging on seventeen, and after two years of not going out to eat anywhere incredibly public, Dave has decided to drag you along almost literally to a place down the street that just opened up. It has a drive through lane, but apparently Dave's completely against the idea of actually using it, and he parks the beat-up red pick-up in the parking lot of the establishment. 

One look at the sign, and you don't trust this place. Your hands work against you, yet also with you, as you flap them up by your face. These, unlike most of the times you flap your hands, are not happy flaps. Happy flaps are around the air near your torso, but unhappy flaps are up by your face, as if you're fanning yourself off. These are very unhappy flaps.

"Dude, chill out," Dave says, clicking the lock on his seat belt and guiding it around so it doesn't snap up and cause him to get a black eye. That happened on his first day driving, and Bro found it incredibly funny to watch him suffer and nurse the injury he had gained from his own mistake. You didn't find it too funny, because half of you didn't understand what was so funny about getting smacked in the eye with a random piece of metal in the shape of some sort of strange, oddly long key. "It's gonna be fun."

"That's what you always say, before everything goes to 'shit.'" 

"Seriously, Dirk, you gotta stop that thing with the over annunciation of words you aren't sure fit in whatever sentences." Dave flicks your shoulder and laughs when you let out a high-pitched groaning noise. He imitates your noise, but you don't think he really meant to. It didn't seem intentional. "It's kind of strange."

You don't say anything, instead your fingers find purchase on your own buckle, and you let it slide into its natural position when it isn't in use. You tug it a few times, and it seems to be stuck in place until you pull gently; this has never failed to sooth you before, and you really needed that relaxation you achieved once you completed whatever strange stim that was. With a mental note to remind yourself to do that more often, the two of you get out of the car and trail into the fast food restaurant. Dave makes a show of looking around and "admiring" this place, though you stick to staring at the intensely colored floor. 

Thankfully enough, there was no line inside, and it only took you a few minutes to get your food; you were both pretty quick to find your seat, and you sat down next to a wall which had a very large window on it. You wondered what would happen if you were to take apart that window, and then take the windowsill off, and then take a chunk out of the wall. You wondered if it would look cool, and you wondered whether or not the inside of the wall would be something you'd seen before in other buildings; maybe it was some completely new structure format? You doubted it, but it would be worth looking into.

Dave grunted your name, and you caught yourself feeling the wall. It was smooth, and it had miniature bumps that ran neatly underneath your fingertips. It was a good kind of bumpy, in that way that made you want to feel more of it. Your hand lowered for a split second, before you began to start trailing your fingers over the wall again, and ended up getting lost in the feeling.

The familiar sound of laughter was what broke you out of your thoughts, and you gave a quick glance over Dave's shoulder to figure out who was laughing, and why.

Apparently, it was a guy, about the same age as you, who was sitting with three of his friends. Two of them were blonde, one of them was black, and the other was so pale with such dark hair that they looked like some real-life male version of Snow White. Snow White guy was the one who was laughing, presumably at something one of the blondes was doing; which caught you off guard.

He was rocking obsessively in his seat, rhythmically yet incredibly incessant, feeling at the wall next to him and making a very high-pitched keening noise that made you want to pull your hair out and hit yourself in the head from how awful it was. You groaned quietly, shaking your head to keep yourself from doing something that wasn't about to fix the fact that you had heard one of the most awful noises of your life just then; but you couldn't find yourself tearing your gaze away from the blonde who was feeling the wall and rocking and keening. 

_Is he stimming?_

Curious, you kept watching him, examining his facial expression as he continued the actions and the noises. The noises, you could have done without, but something about what he was doing just kept causing you to watch. You hated it when you looked at his face, and when his eyes met yours you felt like you might actually end up pulling your hair out and groaning as loud as you could and shutting your eyes. You didn't, but you really wanted to. The blonde doing such strange things grinned awfully at you, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, he stopped, laughed out loud, and proceeded to flap his hands around the air near his head. He stood up. "What are you, a chicken?"

You didn't understand a single letter in anything he had just said. Why was he asking whoever it was he was asking, if they were a chicken? Were they overly scared of something dumb that was going on, or was it literal, and was it because of something they were doing? But who was it he was even talking to? His eyes were still glaring into your own, granted your own were covered by shades and that helped with the sensory overload a bit, but you still didn't really understand.

Was he looking at you, or someone behind you?

You glanced over your own shoulder, and after finding the rest of the tables empty, you were quick to recognize the fact that he was most definitely calling you a chicken, and you weren't quite sure why.

"I said, are you a fuckin' chicken?"

That's when it hit you. You had been flapping your hands for the past minute to try and calm yourself down, and they were not happy flaps. This guy was imitating you; and he had been earlier, too. You hadn't realized that you had been rocking or keening like that, and just the thought of causing others the same immense pain you had just been subjected to thanks to your own repetition of the noise was enough to make you feel sick. You began to flap your hands harder to accommodate for this distressing feeling, telling yourself that you would not throw up, you would not throw up, you would not throw up.

At this time was when Dave caught on to there being something wrong, and he fiddled with his phone before taking out the earbuds he had in discreetly. You didn't even know that he had brought his earbuds, let alone was listening to music as he ate his sandwich. You thought the distant beat that you heard was coming from the speakers in the fast food restaurant. Dave shoved his phone and earbuds into the pocket of his sweatshirt, and turned in his chair to glare at the people behind him.

"The fuck's goin' on? Are you assholes fuckin' with my brother?"

"Who, him? He's your brother?" The guy had a distinct tone in his voice that you couldn't quite catch, though you really don't think he was even attempting to be sincere in any way, shape, or form. 

"They look pretty much exactly alike," the other blonde piped up through a mouthful of sandwich. 

"Whatever, brother or not. I wouldn't fuck with him in a million years, all flappin' his hands like some sort of retarded-ass chimpanzee trying to learn sign language." The first blonde sneered, and the black guy typed away on his phone like the world was ending in ten minutes and he had to post everything to the internet (that was an exaggeration, he was just typing really quickly).

"Maybe he wouldn't be doin' that if ya weren't fuckin' starin' at him like he's in an exhibit strictly for you and your overtly gay hides to look at," Dave snapped, his chair creaking as he scooted back. You couldn't help but notice that he sounded and looked like Bro did before he was about to tan someone's hide. Dave looked ready to pounce, and for a moment you could imagine Dave leaping foreword and punching all of them in the crotch. "Get back to your damned food, and we'll get back to ours. Stop buggin' us and fuck off."

"Hey man, we're just sayin' the truth here," the first blonde guy held up his hands in some sort of passive gesture, but Dave obviously wasn't having any of it. His face turned undeniably red with equally as such undeniable anger, and whatever self control he had left seemed to be caught in the wind as he shoved himself up and out of his seat, seeming set on approaching the table that the four teen guys were sitting at. Unlucky enough for Dave, with how quickly he had stood up, his shades slid down and almost off. He managed to push them back up quick enough to keep them from hitting the ground, but that tiny slip up was enough for the group of guys to see the vibrant red and proceed to "flip their shit".

"Oh shit! Did you see his eyes?"

"Yooo, that's some freaky shit."

"I want lipstick that red."

The other three turned to look at Snow White guy, who's remark had apparently been pretty strange to the rest of them, and all was silent for a good few moments, save for your frantic rustling to try and clean up so you and Dave could leave immediately after Dave punched one, or all, of them in the dick. The quiet remark of, "I gotta post this on all my shit," hardly broke the silence, but the tapping of fingernails on a phone screen was enough to punctuate the sentence.

At this point, even you could tell that Dave was absolutely livid, and his hands were clenched embarrassingly tight. The situation made you want to start squealing to yourself until it all went away, but you knew that that probably wouldn't happen anytime soon, especially not if you just simply squealed. You realized that when you were younger, squealing never made your problems go away, and if it did, it would take a while until they went away from you simply being incredibly annoying. 

Feeling trapped and like you were starting to burn from the inside out, a ticklish feeling began to stir up inside your upper chest, and you wanted to duck and flap your hands and scream, but you knew you weren't allowed to, because that would just cause more of a scene than you would be able to handle, and that just increased the intensity of the feeling. With no sure-fire outlet, you stepped around the table you and Dave had been sitting at just a minute or so prior, and walked straight over to the table with the four guys. The first blonde guy had stood up, so you were pretty much eye-to-eye at this point (save for the fact that you were about two inches taller). The hardly concealed word of, "Freak," was enough to spur you on, and it was over in a moment. You didn't even think when it happened, it just happened, and that really confused you, but it felt nice to let all of that anger out.

The blonde guy groaned loudly, falling to the ground and clutching himself as he curled into the fetal position. The side of his face pressed into the carpet as he hissed out the simple phrase, " _Sweet baby fuckin' Jesus_ ," and tried to stifle the pain that was to come, and was needlessly crashing on him at this point.

You just kicked this guy "where the sun don't shine", and you don't regret it.

You and Dave got right the fuck out of there as soon as you were both able to run, because getting arrested for assault wasn't on your list of things to do before either of you died, or before anyone died for that matter. You didn't want to get caught by the cops, not that you were particularly worried about being arrested, because they had technically started all of that.

Dave was laughing like a maniac the entire ride back, and only just managed to calm down by the time you both got home.

"There you two are," David said as soon as you two walked in the front door, a phone in his hands which was gleaming a bright message system relay on it. "Where did you both go to so late?"

Dave grinned, unable to keep a secret for the life of him, which you didn't expect to happen. You knew he would spill as soon as someone asked, but what he said instead made you feel as if you were the one who got kicked in the crotch.

"Dirk got some dick tonight."


End file.
